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Integrating Professional Broadcast Systems for Higher Education

St. Cloud State University had an ambitious goal in mind for both its sports programs and its broadcast facilities. The university wanted to create a broadcast environment that could equal what viewers see on ESPN and raise the profile of its NCAA Division I hockey teams as well as its 19 Division II teams. The renovation of their existing broadcast facilities would also serve as a state-of-the-art teaching platform, allowing students to learn broadcast sports and broadcast news.

St. Cloud State University had an ambitious goal in mind for both its sports programs, known as the Huskies, and its broadcast facilities. At a time when the value of collegiate sports has come to rival that of the pro leagues, the university wanted to create a broadcast environment that could equal what viewers see on ESPN and raise the profile of its NCAA Division I men's and women's hockey teams as well as its 19 Division II teams. At the same time, this planned renovation of their existing broadcast facilities would have to also serve as a state-of-the-art teaching platform, allowing students to learn broadcast sports and broadcast news in a hands-on way using the same technologies and workflows that are at the leading edge in the real world of commercial broadcasting.

Central Equipment Room

Broadcast Studio

The new $4.9-million broadcast facility, located across two floors of the campus' Stewart Hall, accomplished all of these goals by including two control rooms — one each for sports and news. The control rooms, designed and integrated by the Alpha Video Sports and Entertainment Group, are fitted with equipment including a Grass Valley Karrera switcher with panels for each control room, two four-channel Grass Valley K2 Dyno replay servers, as well as Chyron for graphics, Evertz for routing and multiviewing, Tightrope Media Systems for master control, EditShare for shared storage and archiving, Panasonic for field acquisition, FUJINON for lenses, Autoscript for teleprompting, and Wheatstone for audio mixing.

In addition, the control rooms' reach is extended, via a combination of single-mode fiber and triax cabling, out to the school's sports venues: the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, Husky Stadium, and Halenbeck Hall, where nine Grass Valley LDX high-definition cameras pull double duty in the studios and in the venues.